Questions... the frogs are changing...

[tarita2004]

so i have recently rescued 2 fire bellied frogs. i have moved them to a 10gal with water for them to swim in. However now i notice a few changes amongst the 2....
1. one is darker green and the other is quite vibrant now.. (will have pix tomorrow hopefully)
2. they bark (or at least one does..i can't tell if it's one or both, lol)
3. there is some aggression or display of something between them...they jump at each other and like "nip" or is this mating??


so could one be a male and one be a female?
how do you really tell?? i've only found mixed info online!!!
any advice whatsoever??

thanks if you can help!!

[Mygala]

I'm going to guess that you mean Chinese Fire-bellied Toads. (Bomina orientalis)

I'd say Congratulations are in order, as it sounds like you got the environment right, and they are starting to breed. The barking call is the tipoff. Mine always started to call before breeding.

They can be difficult to sex without experience. Males tend to have thicker forearms and rougher backs than females, but it's really hard to tell on some. The easiest way I found, was to see which ones tried to get on the backs of the others. ....those are most likely the males.

I don't recall any aggression among my toads, if a male mounted a male, ...oh well. Sometimes the mounted male would make a strange little croak to clarify the mistake. Sometimes the croak worked, sometimes it didn't.

Since you only have two, I would be shocked if you ended up with a male and a female. I don't recall exactly, but I seem to remember the male/female ratio was pretty skewed. Might have had something to do with my incubation techniques, not sure.

Ravnos might have more info/experience on this, I just had them for a couple of years and moved on to dart frogs.

Good Luck...
Bob

[tarita2004]

thanks though! I'll be trying to get some pix tonite when i get off work... i just worry that one is darker than the other and i don't want it to be sick or anything!
I know i'm a worrier

[angel_baby]

I haven't worked with these particular types of toads before so I'm not sure but I know in some species of animals the females and males have different colors. Usually females are brighter and more colorful and males are darker and less colorful but like I said I'm not sure about your toads because I don't know if they work like that. Hopefully someone else could give you more info.

[tarita2004]

I uploaded before and after pix here tarita2004/Lucky and Indy/NEWCAGE - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Read the titles to see what i mean

[tarita2004]

(oh and thanks for the advice if you have any! i would love to know what's going on )